Are Paypal & eBay to partner with Facebook?

If the rumours are true Paypal & eBay are to announce a partnership with Facebook at eBay’s X.commerce Innovation conference. The conference, which is in San Francisco on the 12th and 13th October, is where the company will unveil its visions for the future.

So what can we expect? Well one possibility is a Facebook partnership on the new X.commerce platform. According to PayPal, X.commerce will feature a “fabric” that stitches the platform together to creat a inew experience for retailers and customers alike. Adobe and Kenshoo have already been announced as partners so Facebook could be announced as a further partner.

Another possibility is that PayPal and Facebook have reached a similar deal as the one Facebook have with American Express where your profile is linked to your credit card. With the growth of social retail and more money passing through the network with games, apps etc, there is huge potential for integration with PayPal.

Facebook will not charge

After every major Facebook change, amongst all the people swearing blind that they will delete their Facebook account if their profile isn’t reverted back to the old style, there are always rumours that Facebook are going to start charging. Ridiculously the news is always spread by chain statuses rather than an official Facebook announcement but people still believe them!

Image: Mashable

Facebook will not start charging users to use the site; it is not in their interest to and they don’t need the money. It is estimated that Facebook is going to bring in $4 billion of revenue in 2011 alone and in 2012 it is on track to go public which could see the company valued at between $80 billion and $100 billion.

Also Facebook’s business model is about having as many users as possible and remaining free is key to achieve this. Facebook did not introduce advertising until 2007 so that they could focus on growing its users as quickly as possible. The company’s main source of income comes from highly targeted advertising that is based on the data each user shares such as the band or brands that they ‘Like’.

As well as profiting from advertising Facebook also profits from Facebook Credits.

Google+ Sky rockets

On 20th September Google+ went from being “invitation only” to “open access” and emerged as the third largest site in Social Network and forums. Once the site became available to everyone it saw a massive spike in visits to the site, with an incredible 1269% growth in the week starting September 17th. Google+ also received nearly 15 million US visits last week compared to 1.1 million logins in previous weeks.

According to Heather Dougherty, research director at Hitwise "In just one week, Google+ went from ranking as 54th most visited site in our Social Networking and Forums category to 8th place,"

Is this success due to Google+ become “open access” just as Facebook announced major changes to its site, which would inevitably lead to some degree of user dissatisfaction? I guess time will tell.